The Most Iconic Food Paintings

What food images capture the zeitgeist of their time, and what do they say about cultural shifts through the ages? We recruit a panel of museum professionals, academics, and enthusiasts to lead us on a gourmand's stroll through art history.

Few cultural products express beliefs and values with the same power as food (and it’s no great leap to think that Instagrammers would feel the same). In art, food helps convey status—certain dishes and ingredients connect to royalty, while others relay the plight of the populace. Through narrative and still life, and from Old World classics to Pop Art, food roots an image in time and place.

History tells us the same. Ancient Greeks and Romans regularly depicted great banquets. Food-related symbolism was rife in the Middle Ages, and equally powerful in the Renaissance. The pomegranate, for example, has at times represented fertility; we all know about Eve and her apple; and, of course, we can understand strung-up fowl as a trophy from the hunt. These images demonstrate privilege. Look around today’s landscape and you’ll realize not much has changed.

By the turn of the 19th century, foodways in art became more intertwined with social commentary, inspired by issues like rapid modernization or increasing gender equality. Pop artists Roy Lichtenstein frequently depicted ubiquitous favorites—hot dogs, pies, and steaks—while his contemporary, Andy Warhol, obsessed over the relentless expansion of packaged goods. Their legacy, built during the topsy-turvy ‘60s, lives on in a slew of multi-hyphenate (digital, urban, street), Internet-friendly artists who toy with our inner fat kid urges.

From barbecues that capture the festive act of feasting, to a Pop Art maple-syrup masterpiece, here are seminal works that demonstrate the breadth of food in art history.—Nick Schonberger

Annie, Poured From Maple Syrup, Ed Ruscha (1966)

Ed Ruscha’s Annie, Poured From Maple Syrup is such a fantastic compression of food, culture, and signage at a moment when Pop Art was consuming the American zeitgeist. Realized only four years after Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, Ruscha’s masterpiece has both a painterly and a graphic attitude in a way that few paintings at that time did. And, like a number of West Coast artists working in the tall shadow of New York, it has a healthy dose of humor in its play on an American icon—the comic strip character Little Orphan Annie. Ruscha’s painting points to something that would remain part of American culture, considering that his canvas came some 40 years after Annie entered popular culture and that, today, nearly 50 years later, the iconic name as well as its specific graphic depiction still hold great value. Perhaps what makes Annie most magical is that it could have been painted today, or perhaps made at some kitchen table by a visually inclined child with a steady hand, a bottle of syrup, and a love for the graphic quality of the printed word.—Charlie White, Professor of Fine Art at the Roski School of Art and Design at The University of Southern California

I Love You with My Ford, James Rosenquist (1961)

Plenty of pop artists took on food as subject matter: Andy Warhol focused on Campbell’s soup cans; Roy Lichtenstein, the hot dog; and James Rosenquist, spaghetti. Around this time, the American dining industry was coming into its own, and food production was getting faster. Canning lines shifted into high gear, bringing off-season edibles to be sold at any number of big-chain supermarkets. In sum, American food became more than just apple pie; it put on a suit and tie, and was transformed into a business. What sets James Rosenquist apart from Warhol and Lichtenstein is his pure dude-ness. We see food, cars, and women. Is that all there is—this lustful trifecta for the consumerist mind? I hope not.—Corinna Kirsch, senior editor at Art F City, business and market reporter for The Art Newspaper.

Supper time, Horace Pippin (1940)

After being wounded in World War I, Horace Pippin took up art to try to strengthen the muscles in his arm (I will try to remember this on my next sick day instead of ordering Seamless). The body of work that Pippin developed goes beyond basic scenes of everyday life that typically come to mind when you consider “folk art.” These are vehicles for interpreting important, often bad, episodes in American history and grappling with what society may become. I think of his flat scenes like prints—scaled down and ready to be widely disseminated and understood. Why add unnecessary dimensions and dilute the essence?
For me, “Giving Thanks” and “Suppertime," which hang at the Barnes Foundation alongside Post-Impressionist still lifes and other European masterpieces, convey the unique importance of the kitchen and table in African-American life and in the American imagination. Food is just the beginning, or perhaps, beside the point. These are spaces for reflecting on your day; passing down family history, recipes, and traditions; discussing serious issues; and observing daily religious rituals. But please have a bite while you’re sitting down doing all of that!—Timothy Wroten, Senior Communications Manager at the New-York Historical Society, @timothywroten

Choy Suey, Edward Hopper (1929)

Food isn’t immediately present in Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey, painted in 1929. The two tables depicted are empty of dishes, and the people at each—two women in the foreground, a couple behind—sit in conversation. The vertical signage running just right of center and reading “Suey,” signals the character of the cafe. Beginning in the 1880s, adventurous New Yorkers (Bohos, writers, etc.) began frequenting local Chinese “chow chow” restaurants. Fifty years later, these institutions had spread across the United States, blossomed in popularity, and helped establish Chinese-inspired cuisine as a concrete edition to American foodways. Some New York society columnist suggested at the time that the chop suey competed in popularity with sandwiches and salads. Hopper’s work, with its subtle nod to exoticism, reveals the climate of the time. Not only had New Yorkers adapted to the “chow chow” restaurant by 1929, but they'd also become completely relaxed within them. The three women further express this notion. Their presence symbolizes changing times—before the ‘20s, it would have been very unlikely to see a woman dining with a man, let alone two ladies enjoying a meal together.—Nick Schonberger, founding editor at First We Feast

Cakes, Wayne Thiebaud (1963)

Though he’s often classified as a pop artist, it would be more accurate to call American painter Wayne Thiebaud a godfather to the genre, since much of his work that could be categorized as "pop art" came before the movement was firmly established. But even a brief glimpse of Thiebaud’s output makes it easy to understand why he is often considered alongside the likes of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. In fact, it was while spending some time in New York and being exposed to the work of those aforementioned artists that Thiebaud began recreating shape-based food displays.
Thiebaud received his art training at a trade school, which helps explain the practicality in his pieces. The 94-year-old artist recreates images as he sees them, and utilizes techniques that define what he describes as the very tradition of painting, “of orchestrating a single shape into its various configurative potentials. If you look closely, they all look alike at first, until you examine them. Each one is curiously different in some minor way.”
In the early 1960s he released a series of colorful paintings of sweets with titles like Pies, Pies, Pies (1961), Around the Cake (1962), and this 1963 painting, Cakes. For Thiebaud, it’s really a matter of paying tribute to the beauty that exists in the everyday: “It's easy to overlook what we spend our majority of time doing, and that's an intimate association with everyday things: putting on our shoes, tying our ties, eating our breakfast, cooking our meals, washing our dishes. Somehow that ongoing human activity seems to me very much worth doing.”—Jennifer M. Wood, writer

Figure with Meat, Francis Bacon (1954)

Once you see Bacon’s Figure with Meat, you won’t forget it. That’s perhaps what makes a painting of a pope flanked by beef so iconic. Inspired by raw meat images made by Rembrandt and Chaim Soutine, Bacon, "influenced by postwar Existentialist thought, intended his paintings to remind viewers that we are potential carcasses,” according to the Art Institute of Chicago. There’s something about the white, vertical lines in this painting that make the pope seem to scream—as though his entire existence is in the process of being erased. A frightening portrait, for any era.—Corinna Kirsch, senior editor at Art F City, business and market reporter for The Art Newspaper

Kiss Me and You'll Kiss the 'Lasses, Lily Martin Spencer (1856)

Sight and taste are united in this well-known canvas by Lily Martin Spencer, which shows baskets of luscious apples, berries, and pineapples flanking an equally luscious brunette. Preparing jam or a similar sugary treat, the coy chef curls the fingers of one hand around a paring knife while lifting a spoon of molasses with the other. A lass who loved a good joke, Spencer included a flirty threat in the title of the painting. Should the gawking viewer try to steal a kiss from this well-heeled lady (who is clearly out of his league), he'll get a dousing of the "'lasses" from the spoon in her hand. Forbidden fruit never looked so sweet.—Layla Bermeo, PhD in Art History at Harvard

Peasant Wedding Feast, Pieter Bruegel (1556)

In order to get source material for his paintings, it's alleged that Northern Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel disguised himself in peasant garb to sneak into events like the one above. (One of the earliest known wedding crashers, it seems.) What differentiated him from his Italian contemporaries was the fact that he painted real people going about their typical business as opposed to high society Bacchanalian feasts portrayed in Southern Europe. To the left, we see jugs of wine being filled. In the foreground, two men carry an enormous tray (made from an unhinged door if you look closely) of bowls of porridge and soup; two musicians are playing pipe music. The bride is sitting in front of the green wall-hanging with a paper crown suspended above her head, but speculation abounds as to who the groom might be…or if he’s even in the painting at all.—Holly Howe, @hollytorious

Freedom from Want, Norman Rockwell (1943)

Freedom from Want serves up iconic notions of mid-20-century American food, holidays, and family, picturing rows of smiling white faces bordering a table set with white linen and white plates. While audiences in the United States have read the modest sides and water glasses as evidence of World War II-era rationing, European viewers at the time saw the hefty turkey as a flashy show of American overabundance. With celery on the table instead of stuffing, these folks may be free from want, but they are probably in want of a better menu.—Layla Bermeo, PhD in Art History at Harvard

Reversible Head with Basket of Fruit, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1590)

In order to fully see—and appreciate—the work of 16th-century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, it’s necessary to look at his work from every possible angle. A Mannerist in the truest sense, Arcimboldo’s work examined the delicate relationship between people and their environments. And in the case of Arcimboldo, this interest usually manifested itself in unique portraits of human figures, recreated in edible items (think fruits and vegetables), and usually with a touch of Baroque style.
While Arcimboldo’s bold and humorous style would be considered slightly audacious even by today’s standards, the fact that he worked as a court portraitist for the Hapsburg family for more than 25 years makes his work even more rebellious. According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, “Arcimboldo was always up to something capricciosa, or whimsical, whether it was inventing a harpsichord-like instrument, writing poetry or concocting costumes for royal pageants. He likely spent time browsing the Hapsburgs’ private collections of artworks and natural oddities in the Kunstkammer, considered a predecessor of modern museums.”
It is hardly surprising then that Arcimboldo wasn’t particularly well known during his lifetime, or that his work, which is clearly far head of its time, was largely forgotten until quite recently. (In the past few years, exhibitions of his work have been on display at the Louvre and National Gallery of Art.) But even in a career full of creative high points, what makes Reversible Head with Basket of Fruit such a unique creation, even for Arcimboldo, is how the human element is essentially invisible when flipped upside down (or rightside up, depending on your perspective).—Jennifer M. Wood, writer

Barbecue, Archibald Motley (1960)

As much as I appreciate a good bit of chiaroscuro and some skilled brushwork, still-life painting has never done much for me. What I really want to see is the joy of the feast, not food with no one around to eat it.
Known as the “painter laureate of the black modern cityscape,” the 20th-century African-American artist Archibald Motley was a master of capturing the type of wild, kinetic energy that I associate with great eating and drinking experiences—boozy late-night card games (The Liar, 1936), for example, or picnics in the park fueled by bread, wine, and music (The Picnic, 1936).
His two paintings titled Barbecue—one from 1934 (below), and one from 1960—not only show his progression as an artist, but they’re also fascinating companion pieces historically, juxtaposing the black elite of 1930s Chicago with a more integrated, but decidedly bawdier, crowd a few decades later. Motley developed a knack for depicting (and, at times, exaggerating) a wide spectrum of skin tones, and that technique gives the latter scene an extra boost of vibrancy: Your eye is drawn to each group, and you’re left to wonder what brought them to the barbecue. There’s the conspiratorial threesome in the right corner, leaning in to whisper over the cigarettes; the confident, spiky-haired little girl grasping her ice-cream cone in the foreground; and the larger-than-life cook at the center, who almost looks like he’s orchestrating the whole scene with his long knife and pot fork.
Everyone’s immersed in some type of conversation or activity, but the placement of the barbecue makes it clear that the grub is the reason they’re there. When I look at the painting, it reminds me why we started First We Feast: What’s important about food isn’t always the dish on the table, but the life that happens around it.—Chris Schonberger, editor-in-chief at First We Feast

Campbell's Soup Cans, Andy Warhol, (1962)

Warhol believed deeply in the democracy of mass-produced products, proclaiming the great equalizing power of Coca-Cola and Campbell's soup. This installation of 32 paintings of soup cans represents the series that started them all, as he would continue to recreate Campbell's signature products in silkscreens and sculptures throughout his career. Drawing from his early successes as a commercial illustrator, Warhol rejected painterly styles and nurtured his interests in uniformity, repetition, and semi-mechanized processes. By focusing on the instantly recognizable Campbell's label, Warhol created one of the most iconic food paintings of all time without really painting any food at all.—Layla Bermeo, PhD in Art History at Harvard

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper (1942)

Sometimes it makes me tear up when I think of the great “New York” paintings that have moved outside of the Empire State, only to be seen here again for special occasions and traveling exhibitions. I immediately start eating my emotions when I think of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, which calls the Art Institute of Chicago home (Chicago’s pizza holds no candle to ours, but their museums are pretty rad). This masterpiece shows Hopper’s technical realism that perhaps ironically makes the viewer feel profound ambiguity and mixed emotion. Since moving to New York ten years ago, I’ve left the bar or party for a late-night diner nosh—alone and in my thoughts like the subjects in this painting.—Timothy Wroten, Senior Communications Manager at the New-York Historical Society, @timothywroten

Gebakken Ei, Tjalf Sparnaay (2009)

Any conversation about the oil paintings of Netherlands-based artist Tjalf Sparnaay usually begin with a question: “Wait, that’s a painting?” Working in the hyperrealism genre, Sparnaay’s work is so richly detailed that it has helped spawn a subgenre known as “megarealism.” And it’s easy to see why with Gebakken Ei, an image so evocative that one can practically smell and taste the dish. Though he works in a manner similar to the early Dutch masters, Sparnaay’s focus on food is one way in which he creates a universality with his subject matter. This may be his best known image of a baked egg, but it’s an object he has returned to several times—and even wrote a poem about it:
"The sun shining behind the clouds
smiles at us every morning
with its fried fringe
like a coastline with beaches"
—Jennifer M. Wood, writer

I recently discovered a newly conserved painting at my job (the New-York Historical Society) that I think will become a rediscovered “hit” once it goes on exhibit again. Adriaen van Utrecht was a celebrated Flemish Baroque still life and animal painter of the Antwerp School. His scenes typically illustrated a gluttonous bounty of edible delights that overflow from the table onto the floor. His use of light and of Baroque devices, such as a window in the background or a draped curtain, feel Italian in a way. This lush scene painted in a dark palette is a moody feast for the eyes, but you need a break (like after eating a gluttonous main course). Luckily, it’s all lightened up a bit by the curious cat poised to enter by the window.—Timothy Wroten, Senior Communications Manager at the New-York Historical Society, @timothywroten

Everyone knows: Nothing goes together like peanut butter and jelly. That must be why Brazilian artist Vik Muniz decided to recreate Leonardo’s famous Mona Lisa painting (as seen not so long ago in a selfie by another famous pairing) in those two tasty sandwich ingredients. To add another meta layer to it, it’s technically a copy of Andy Warhol’s copy of the Mona Lisa. Muniz has made numerous works by shaping, pouring, or arranging materials from diamonds and rubbish (see his 2010 film Waste Land, set in a rubbish dump in Rio de Janeiro), to sugar and chocolate syrup to create images that he then photographs. In his 2003 TED talk he commented, “In the theatre you have the character and the actor in the same place trying to negotiate each other in front of an audience.” His art is similar in terms of the negotiation between the material and the image.—Holly Howe, writer

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